Leave Our Water Alone

by Editorial by Mark Steel (publisher)
Caribou County (Idaho) Sun, July 6, 2000

Announcement and press reports last week that the American Falls
Reservoir is expected to be drained down to 6 percent of capacity as
part of a push to help endangered salmon get past Snake and Columbia River dams
should not be a surprise to those who have followed the issue.

The flush -- or flow augmentation -- is one tool for trying to help
the salmon and steelhead smolts get through the slack water system
quicker. It is not a good alternative, but one the federal government and its
agencies will use.

The best single solution to most independent viewers and scientists
studying the problem with wild strains of salmon and steelhead in the
upper stretches of the river system in Idaho is to breach or bypass
the four Lower Snake River dams. That speeds up the flow of the river
because it becomes a river again, thus moving the smolts along faster
and producing better survival rates than with the slack water pools behind
the four dams.

But Idaho's top Republican leaders staked out the notion early on that
we will not breach the dams and no Idaho water would be used to
augment flows. They wanted their cake and got it, too.

What some eastern Idaho farmers and business leaders have suspected
and feared is now coming to pass. Idaho's stored water in the Upper Snake
River will be drawn down to flush the fish. We lose. The dam
supporters win. The fish still lose.

There is not and will not be a win-win solution and the political
types and special interest groups like the utilities and the big companies
they serve ought to be honest enough to quit talking about win-win.

We can breach the dams and northern Idaho business suffers in the
short term from loss of subsidized barging on the river and will have to go
to slightly more expensive rail. Utility users will see slightly higher
power rates. About II farmers in Washington will have to have their
irrigation intake systems lowered into the bed of the Snake River. Recreation may
increase the economy in the long run in that area, but I wouldn't bet
a lot on that. And qualified and independent biologists and scientists
believe the wild salmon and steelhead will increase in numbers
because of less mortality and better return spawning instincts from the
faster water in that stretch.

That's the choice I prefer because I'm selfish. The dams caused the
problem (at least most of it), let the dams be part of the fix and
leave our water alone.

Or, we can flush with Eastern Idaho water. That means irrigators in
this part of the state are out of luck. More small towns will continue to
dry up and die. Implement dealers, irrigation companies, hardware stores,
grocers, and the like can lose customers in a market where they have
lost too many already. Surviving property owners can pay more in taxes
for fewer kids in school, fewer patients in their county hospitals, and
carry more of the tax burden in general. Recreationists can travel
somewhere else to recreate, I guess. Now you start to get the picture.

But the top Republican officials will still continue to say no to
breaching and no to flushing. They can demand win-win solutions, when
there may not be any. Maybe it is time they get a reality check, see
there is going to be a division in the state whether they like it or
not, and then cut the crap and start making realistic, hardline decisions
instead of stonewalling and weeping at the wailing wall. In the meantime, we
can just sit by and watch our water back up behind four dams in order to
keep someone else's cow from being gored.